Gallery: Capcom Shares Stunning Concept Art For Monster Hunter Rise's Frost Islands

"Don't cha wish your Crown Tundra was hot like me?"

This game looks awsome AF.

And now I have my new set of PC scrolling backgrounds. Huzzah!

I just downloaded the demo of the game yesterday and as embarrassed as I am to say it, I found the game to be virtually unplayable - not because it was mechanically or graphically busted or anything, it's just WAY too complex. For me, anyway.

It's funny bc, you know, I've always kind of considered myself something of a "hardcore gamer", but - after being literally unable to finish the first mission due to dying at the hands of the main beast several times in a row - I was more than a little humbled.

@Andy_Witmyer
Monster Hunter is a complex game. And if someone just casually downloads the demo thinking they'll "give it a whirl" they're gonna be in for a rude awakening. 99.9% of all new players say what you're saying now, or complain it feels slow, etc. But it's just a matter of needing to understand the game. And yes, it's complex, but you'd be surprised how quick you start picking it up if you actually give a genuine effort and have a mentor to help guide you.

See Hey Jay! YouTube channel where he played the demo, made a quick video on how he didn't like it, and the MH community gave him an outpouring of support, so much so he decided to play through MH World and live stream his journey into becoming a master hunter, and already, today, after his first 3 hour stream, with the help of veterans in the Twitch chat, he's loving it.

I wrote a guide for new players such as yourself. Follow this guide and make a genuine effort to learn, and I can almost guarantee you that you'll end up loving the game. And not just loving it, but LOVING it. Monster Hunter World is my favorite game of all time. That's not some cheap statement from a casual who barely plays any games and has no frame of reference. I've been gaming since 89, have owned every Nintendo, Sega, Sony and MS console and handheld barring OG Xbox, Saturn and Dreamcast, and I have 350 physical Switch games on my shelf. I play a LOT of games. Nothing compares with Monster Hunter though. Absolutely nothing. But you have to make a real commitment to learn it properly, spend time with a weapon mastering its moves, etc.

I'll post the guide next. Too big for one comment.

@Andy_Witmyer
MONSTER HUNTER RISE NEW PLAYER GUIDE [PART 1]

GAME SETTINGS
Target Arrow: HIDE
Player Silhouette: TYPE 1

CONTROLS
Button Hold: SHORT
Sheath: MANUAL (this is crucial)
Dash: L3 or R

CAMERA
Speed: SLOW
Cam Distance: 40 (if not changed to 40, the aiming reticle will be on back of hunter's head, this ensures its just above and you can see what you're aiming at)

GYROSCOPE
Gyro Functionality: ON
Right Analog Up/Down: ON
Normal Gyro (Camera): OFF

#1 Run by holding R or clicking Left Analog (provided settings match the above recommendations). Cannot run with weapon drawn.

#2 Always grab supplies from the blue item box at the start of a quest. You can enter the tent to restock supplies from your personal stash if you run out mid-hunt.

#3 Holding L allows you access to two menus- the radial menu and the item bar. For the radial menu, use the right analog to point at the shortcut item you want to use. Shortcut items can be changed in the menu via + for Menu, then Radial Menu Settings, then Quests, then Shortcut 1, then use right analog to point at the item to swap out, then select Item Pouch, and find the item to swap it with. For the item bar, simply use Y/A to pan left/right through the list to find the item you wish to use. Press Y while your weapon is sheathed to use a selected item.

NOTE: For Radial Menu, I recommend swapping the upper right EZ Ration to Well Done Steak (for stamina replenishment), swapping the right Throwing Kunai to Nulberry (for curing status blights) swapping the lower right map for Antidote (to cure poison), and swapping the lower left Mega Potion for the Mega Potion in the Item Pouch (the default one doesn’t work).

#4 Try out all the weapons and see which one you like most. MH is a game that’s all about mastering a single weapon, not bouncing back and forth (unless you’re more experienced and have already mastered those weapons). So you should find a weapon you like and then practice, practice, practice. Learn the combos. Take a quest and sit by camp practicing combos. In the + menu, find Hunter’s Notes to see some basic moves and combos for the weapon. Watch a Gaijin Hunter tutorial on YouTube for your weapon (MH World tutorials should be fine, unless it’s Hunting Horn which has been revamped, but MH Rise weapon impressions videos are also available and provide most of the moves). I recommend Long Sword, Hunting Horn or Dual Blades for new players. Sword and Shield is often recommended but, personally I don’t find it very satisfying to use. Perhaps you might though.

#5 Explore and gather herbs, bugs, seeds, mushrooms, etc. Crafting plays a huge role in the full game, but in the demo, auto crafting will at least craft some things for you if you gather the right materials. Green Herbs make potions, and Honey with Potions make Mega Potions. Flashbugs make flash bombs, etc.

MONSTER HUNTER RISE NEW PLAYER GUIDE [PART 2]

#6 Gather as many spirit birds as possible. Green extend your health bar permanently for that quest, yellow extends stamina, red extends attack and orange extends defense. In the full game you would normally eat a pre-hunt meal that would extend your Health and Stamina but spirit birds also do this, and should not be ignored. Learn a quick 3 minute path that gets a lot of bang for buck with spirit birds and get used to running that path at the start of every quest to boost your health and stamina before finding the monster.

#7 The wirebug is crucial. Commit it to muscle memory. With weapon sheathed, hold ZL to use the wirebug. ZL + X = 45 degree angle upwards. ZL + A = straight shot across. ZL + ZR = wherever your reticle is pointing, which is easy to fine tune your aim if you have Gyro enabled with the recommended settings above. In combat, with your weapon drawn, you have two separate wirebug attacks, one with ZL + X and one with ZL + A. Learn what they are for your weapon and how you can use them to close distance with a monster or go right into a combo, etc.

#8 Use the Wirefall technique. When hit by the monster and you go flying, immediately use ZL + B + (direction you point with left analog) to spring back to your feet with the wirebug. Since monster Hunter is based on animation commitments, getting knocked down can put you at a serious disadvantage due to the time it takes to recover and get back on your feet. Drill this move into your mind. Etch it in your memory. ZL + B when hit to do a wirefall recovery. Best new move in the game.

#9 Use the camera lock-on. If you click the right analog, it toggles the lock-on icon in the top right between different monsters. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS lock-on to the monster before you start fighting them. Once locked onto a specific monster, tap L at any time to swing the camera directly at them. This is also something you need to etch into your memory. You should constantly be tapping L to adjust the camera as needed during a fight. Not to say you shouldn’t use the right analog stick for the camera at all, but it shouldn’t be your main method of retargeting your camera at the monster. That’s what lock-on is for. DON’T NEGLECT LOCK-ON!

#10 Keep an eye on your health, stamina and sharpness meter. The health bar is the top green bar, the stamina bar is the yellow bar underneath, and the sharpness bar is the knife icon with colors underneath that. Always try to keep your sharpness in the green. Not only do you do less damage at lower levels of sharpness but you can actually bounce off of the monster when you attack. Not good. It locks you into a bounce animation that can get you killed. To sharpen, use a whetstone. You can easily access your whetstone with the radial menu (Hold L, point analog straight up at the yellow whetstone icon and release). You can also sharpen while riding your palamute, which is a good technique to use if you need to sharpen in the middle of combat. As for health, use potions, mega potions or max potions. For stamina, your max amount slowly decreases over time. Any red portion of the stamina bar is lost max stamina, and can be replenished by useing a ration given by the blue item box, or a well done steak (which will also be in your radial menu now if you followed this guide). Always upkeep your stamina. It’s sucks having half a stamina bar.

MONSTER HUNTER RISE NEW PLAYER GUIDE [PART 3]

#11 Don’t leave your weapon drawn in between attacks. Don’t do it! When your weapon is drawn your mobility sucks. It absolutely destroys your movement speed. This is a game where you are supposed to sheath your weapon (tap Y while weapon is drawn) in between bursts of attacks. General cadence of battle should be: wait for opening —> draw attack and follow up with a short combo —> once you see a tell that the monster is about to attack, dodge roll out of the way —> sheath weapon —> run around and reposition —> rinse and repeat. It should be a constant back and forth between attack, then sheath, attack, then sheath.

#12 Experiment with your items. While you should generally keep mega potions selected on your item bar for quick and easy use with Y when in a jam, don’t be afraid to pan through the items and try some of them out. You can lay traps, set bombs (small ones can be thrown, large ones must be detonated with attack), throw elemental beetles you gather, etc. Don’t neglect the tools in your kit!

#13 If a monster is getting low on health, two things will happen. They will start limping if they leave the area, and a small blue icon will appear under their lock-on icon in the top right corner. That lets you know they can be captured (unfortunately you cannot capture in the demo because the game does not give you tranquilizer bombs) and are near death. If the monster retreats to its nest and goes to sleep, the first hit to wake it up does double damage. Try to set larger barrel bombs by its head, then attack his head to wake it up, making sure you hit the bomb first so that the explosion does the first damage and gets doubled. You can also use ZL + X to wiredash into the air at a 45 degree angle, and dunk a large bomb downward onto the monster. If you set two bombs near their head, then bomb dunk them from the sky with the third, not only does it do major damage, it does it with crazy style.

#14 Mounting and riding monsters. Most aerial attacks and wirebug attacks deal mount damage. If you deal enough you can mount the monster and head ram them into walls to do big damage, or use them to attack other monsters. Be sure to do the tutorial quest teaching this mechanic.

#15 Hunt online with others and learn through observation. There’s no substitute for watching a veteran Hunter with your own two eyes.

Iori is super cute. I think he's my favorite of the villagers. I also like Master Utsushi's design, but that surfer dude speech.

I downloaded the demo, played it, pre-ordered the game and now I can't wait for it's release. Loved it

Hm, i am no Fan of the asian focused style the game wen't.
Looks a bit to generic, the Music in the Demo was also boring and nothing i'll remember or recorgnize between other Soundtracks.
Prerior iterations went some mixed up own Style.

@JaxonH You are really making me want to take this on! I’m another who has bounced off MH in the past - though my main experience was MHFU.

Cheers for the guide. I will give Rise some serious thought (and maybe bookmark this page).

@JaxonH Thank you for the extremely helpful advice! This is one of the reasons why I love the Monster Hunter community.

@JaxonH,

Thanks for all that info, for a newbie to the franchise I was getting a little frustrated, I still have a few more goes at the demo so will give some of your advice a whirl.

@johnvboy The demo will be over soon, so this might not matter too much..

But! If you run out of tries in the demo, you can go into the save management on your Switch and delete the demo’s save data.

This will reset your play counter. Essentially giving you unlimited tries.

@Andy_Witmyer

Monster Hunter is not supposed to be easy, unless you're a pro hunter. Give it time and you will become one eventually.

I think they should show the clntrol layout in the menu of the game. I too found it vety complicated and couldn't find an easy overview in the demo, so it took me almost an hour to understand how it generally works. Now the wirebug is a ton of fun!

Just beautiful. There's so much love and passion behind MH it's what makes the world come alive. Can't wait to see the more Yokai inspired creatures !

@Andy_Witmyer https://youtu.be/sl0cW0uurh8 they just showed the weapon training area, it looks really good! Hopefully it had good tutorials to match, if so it'll be more beginner friendly than World

@JaxonH i actually turn that radial menu off. Unless you're familiar with using it it can be distrating and sometimes annoying when you got no idea how to use it (I actually hate it, but that's personal preference, I have a friend who loves it but she liked it in World where's I found it frustrating). It's optional which is nice, just like any of the settings. It's worth just wasting a hunt to mess with them and figure out a weapons attack buttons and combos as well as do a hunt where you just watch what the monsters attack patterns are. They'll enjoy hunts much better if they give themselves time. Your advice is good, but that's still alot of information to give someone in a demo. Better to keep it simple until the full game with the training mode comes.

Also depending on weapon and monster armour, bouncing off a monster isn't always bad. Gajin hunter has tested this before in one of the older games and it still applies so far. Some monsters armour will break after a certain threshold has been taken with that type of damage as it's still using raw blunt damage stats though it's not something you should rely on as it's not going to kill the monster by any means though can mean you just need better gear - basically you want to try and stay out of yellow but you can sometimes get away with it (All damage matters - just ask any prowler player from GU, both boomerang and melee builds did weaker damaging hits, but they could still take out end game bosses when given enough time. I hope he does another video on it for Rise) Sharpness isn't everything either, especially with hammer and hunting horn, both rely better on raw so the bigger the green bar on a weapon the better as that's generally the sweet spot.

@Azuris it's always been asian focused.

@BTB20 in the options menu, there's hunters notes. Those have quick how to guides for every weapon and are there if you ever need a refresher. Hope they come in handy!

@Mushvision,

Good idea, never thought of that.

@Meikahidenori

A Mix between Cultures, in every iteration heading a bit into another one.
But overall heaving it's own recognizable Style.
For example MH3(U) having heavy Polynesian Mix into it.
This one is more into Asian/Japanese.
I just like it lesser than the other MH Games.

I for one really like the games' Japanese aesthetic and can't wait to pick up my preorder on Mar 26th! I've been hoping for a decent MH game on Switch since launch.

The guild master Hojo is unmistakably Ebisu-san, one of Japan's deities for business prosperity and probably the most popular god in Osaka, where Capcom is based. Hope he brings us all good fortune on our hunts!

@johnvboy @Krull @bluetofu
No problem. Can’t express how much it sucks knowing a game is the best game ever made, and wanting to share that joy with everyone, but the vast majority of people who try it will never realize it’s brilliance due to the high barrier of entry, and will likely write it off after clunking around in the demo for 15-20 minutes.

This game goes farther than any other in the series to ease the player in (the new training area is nuts! Check out the MH Twitter- the video shows a mechanical monster piloted by a palico that does attacks you set in the training menu, with moving targets for shooting practice if you’re a ranged user, etc. it’s amazing!) But the demo doesn’t provide any of that. This is why it’s best for new players to just buy the full game and commit to learning it. Rarely, if ever, is someone disappointed in MH who actually sticks around long enough to learn the game properly.

I had the advantage of a coworker who offered to hunt with me online in MH3U on Wii U, but a lot of people don’t have a mentor like that. And there’s so much to learn, it’s hard to delineate the useful info from that which is just wading in the weeds for advanced players.

I know the guide I posted seems like a lot of info to take in, and... it is. But compared to the depth of the full game, it’s only scratching the surface. Yet, I believe you now have everything you need to get into the game. Just making sure your settings are correct and you follow those 15 bullet point tips (which imo are THE most important things for a new player to know), that is enough to come to terms with the game. Everything else will come later or be explained as you play.

If anyone wants help hunting a monster before the online gets cut off on Monday, let me know. I’m off work all weekend and can hop online if needed.

@JaxonH Wow thanks for all of the information! I'll have to study it and give it another whirl.

@JaxonH,

Your guides are awesome, and I can see the game has a lot under it's surface, I did spend a lot of the time on one of my demo runs gathering herbs etc, may wait until the game is released before venturing out again, the demo has given me more than enough reasons to buy the game.

Am I the only one who gets mesmerized by the song on the title screen and spends like 5 minutes listening to it every time I boot up the demo? This game is absolutely beautiful.

@johnvboy
Thank you ☺️ I’m just surprised nobody else has done this yet for Rise given the demo is where most new players will interact with the game. And Monster Hunter demos are notorious for turning off new players by throwing them in the deep end.

@Andy_Witmyer
Sure thing- if you have questions, feel free to tag me or drop by the Monster Hunter Rise forum.

@teko
Nope. I just bought the Arctis 9 wireless headset (it does full wireless to Switch with a dongle in dock, and Bluetooth to phone to mix Discord audio, perfect for Switch voice chat) and wow... I sat there for like 20 minutes listening to the music, not just the title screen but Proof of a Hero rendition that plays when selecting a quest and your weapon. It’s so good.

@JaxonH I love seeing your passion for this series. I agree with everything you say. My first experience with MH was also 3 ultimate and I also got into with a friend. I felt exactly the same initial frustration that most newcomers to MH describe. But once it clicks, the game is amazing. The only problem is that it gets too addictive!

All your advice for new players is excellent. One thing I realized though, is that the really good players don't sheathe that often. They know how to dodge and reposition and use combos perfectly to just keep attacking relentlessly. When I see speed runs of people taking down mizutsune in under 5 minutes in the demo I realized that despite putting hundreds of hours, probably around a thousand, into MH games, I still suck comparatively speaking. I mean I beat all the g rank quests in previous games, and even apex in 4U which I think was the most frustrating, but man, some people do it with style! And that just goes to show the insane amount of depth there is in the combat.

@teko
True. Expert players sheath much less, but a new player will need to sheath in between bursts of attacks. As they improve they'll learn how to close distance with the monster without sheathing (though sometimes you need to run to get outta dodge and that means sheathing).

The wirebug attacks are perfect for this. Charge blade, switch axe and Hunting Horn all have single wirebug moves that propel you forward with an attack that can get you right back in the action. Love it!

I watched a Switch axe speed run on Mizutsune and wow. Stuck on him like glue. I've done OK. Can take out all 3 monsters back to back (Great Izuchi, then Rathian, then Mizutsune) in about 27 minutes, and that's after a 3 minute spiribird run at the start of the quest. The skills are returning

Combat is so deep you can play for thousands of hours and still have a long ways to improve. Love it.

@JaxonH,

Thanks for all your time and effort.

@Meikahidenori Thx, that makes it a bit easier.

@BTB20 hunter's notes are awesome and in every game, so if you ever go back to older ones to try you can always find the basics in there for just about everything.

just a general tip: for you first hunt it's useful to pick a slower weapon like the Great sword and practice dodging so you can watch a monsters attack pattens and see where it's openings are. Dodging and breaking your own combos can be a matter of staying in the fight and not carting. Even with faster weapons like duel bades you need to know when these are so you're not thrown back from the monster everytime you charge in. It might seem like a wasted hunt, but trust me is it ever useful! https://youtu.be/6s_Avcc8Bpw a good video about this with Gajin hunter using Rathian as an example, it's a older video from MHGen however it still applies as it's a very important game mechanic.

The camp is also a great place to try out all your weapon combos! I mainly play Hunting Horn and Insect Glaive so when I've tried the other weapons out I usually mess around with them at the camp first just so I know what all the buttons do, especially since gunner/ranged weapons have different buttons for silk bind moves. You'll usually find people maining one or two weapons for this reason, but there's no reason to restrict yourself. Sometimes a weapon doesn't sing out in the demo (especially ones that rely on element damage) but once you see what you can craft you might find something that speaks to you.

They recently dropped footage of the new training hub room and it's going to be multi player so you can learn with friends (maybe randoms, they didn't give us that info) so it's looking to be the more friendler games to get you started when it finally comes out, especially with customisation on the training dummy! https://youtu.be/SDboEA6o50I